Monday, January 10, 2011

Steel #1

I was sure Steel was dead meat in this thing. The comics blogosphere has been up in arms that the final issue that shipped bears almost no resemblance to the book originally described.

This is Steve Lyons' first DC work that I'm aware of, and he certainly has a nice grasp of the character. But I get the impressino that this Doomsday thing wasn't all his idea. It looks like Doomsday is adapting to each of the Reign of the Supermen characters (plus Supergirl). For Steel, this means Doomsday morphs some ridiculous looking metal armor onto his frame. It looks terrible. Without those jagged bones sticking out, how could you even tell it's Doomsday????

This issue is just smashing, cover to cover. Usually, I'm a big supporter of smashing, but Steel gets hit a lot more than he hits. Doomsday is out of his weight class. Unfortunately, it feels like Steel #1 is more a prologue for other characters than it is a chance for John Henry Irons to get any kind of spotlight. This guy has Iron Man's armor, Thor's hammer, and Cap's heart. Steel should be a top level character. But he's the opening sacrifice to the re-dangerizing of Doomsday. Let's just hope the higher-ups don't decide to kill Steel to re-establish Doomy's rep.

Ed Benes doesn't quite compare with Sean Chen, the original artist solicited for this book. Chen's Steel would have been sleek and powerful; Chen is an ex-Iron Man artist after all. Instead, Benes just gives the book the DCU house-style treatment and makes Doomsday look silly.

1 comment:

Ian from Westfields
said...

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=30202

CBR: How far along in the process were you when you were told where this story was heading? Or was this your idea? Because when we spoke after the "Steel" one-shot was announced, you told us about a very different storyline. Well, let's face it, you pretty much lied to me.

Lyons: Yeah, sorry about that! What I told you was true at the time, though. I'd delivered a script featuring Metallo, it had been accepted and Sean Chen had begun to draw it. It had even been solicited. It was very late in the day that "Steel" #1 became a part of "Reign of Doomsday," which meant we had to scrap the issue we were working on and start over.

To be fair to the Powers That Decide These Things, I guess "Reign" was conceived as a summer event until someone realized that the "Steel" special, a few months earlier, was the perfect book to launch it in. And it meant I got my second DC commission, which was great for me, even if I might never get to see the first one in print, now.

this'll basically be Doomsday plowing through the various books, punk out and kidnap each Supercharacter, and have them all collected to lure out Superman for the final battle. being a Superman Family junkie, i'm all about it.

can't say it'll be any good but it'll feature some of my fave characters.